


Birds of Paradise

by rosedolores



Category: Thor (Comics), Thor (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Hate at First Sight, Light Angst, Loki and Thor Are Not Related, M/M, Slow Burn, Teen Angst, teenage fuck-ups in a small town
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-23
Updated: 2020-02-21
Packaged: 2020-09-25 00:03:06
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 15,590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20367310
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rosedolores/pseuds/rosedolores
Summary: Thor meets Loki during summer break.The moment Loki talks to him he becomes a bruise on Thor's skin he can't stop pressing on.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Unbetad I'm just a lonely piece of hot cheeto. Kudos and comments make me all 🧡🧡🧡🧡 
> 
> Thank you for reading!

“Are you waiting for someone?” asks Thor, the three paper bags rustling in his hands, ready to spill out.

Sprite, Pepsi, Jager, Tito’s, Bayou, sweet Riesling. A summer night at Bo’s, all very hush-hush because even though the parents are out of town, the neighbours are way too nosy.

If Thor wants to bring his share for the night he has to drive to the edge of the town to that one specific small liquor store with grimy windows where the owner is so old and his glasses are so shitty he always thinks Thor is Balder so he doesn’t I.D. him. Younger brother privileges, he supposes.

Booze on the passenger seat – seatbelt over the bags, he doesn’t take any chances – he parked the car on the curb on the other side of the street, and that’s when he saw the kid, sitting on the grass to the left of Bo’s, his back against the mailbox.

The kid looks at him like he just offended him. He has a very good glare. Thor's skin prickles with it, the late afternoon sun bearing down on his neck, leaking around the edges of the deep shadow he casts over the kid.

“What’s it to you?” the kid asks back, his black hair wild around his face, sticking to his temple with sweat.

Thor very rarely hears East Coast accent here in this honest-to-nowhere town wedged between Illinois and Missouri, where the biggest event of the year is the annual Heeney festival. The point of this festival is to drink enough you forget you are partaking in a festival celebrating cows – _livestock_; the town’s main source of income. East Coast accent just doesn’t go with this kind of commitment.

Thor frowns, his temper spiking, “I was just asking.”

The kid snorts, sharply, “I’m just asking too. What’s it to you?”

“Jesus, whatever.”

Thor steps to walk past him, but he sees the kid unfold his legs – long and lean – and pull out a carton of cigs.

“Yeah, you shouldn’t do that,” Thor says, because he doesn’t care where this kid came from, but here they have teenage-fuck-up solidarity. “Old Man Hank’s only hobby is ratting out everyone under the age of eighteen. He lives there.”

Thor points with his chin three houses down the street. Ugly yellow house, dried out plants on the dirty-white front porch, stone birdbath that has never seen water, unless it has rained. Even then, the birds would not come. When they were smaller Balder and his idiot friend told them Old Man Hank can only eat dead birds, that’s why there is never one in the birdbath. The birds avoid him. They can smell blood. Balder made up as many gory details as he could until they all started crying.

The kid rakes his gaze lazily over Thor, then the house, blinking slowly, putting the cig between his lips, “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

“What a dick,” the kid says, lighting up, staring at Thor through the smoke. A dog barks somewhere. Thor feels the sweat of his palms seep through the paper bags.

“Look, do you want to come in for a bit? That’s my friend Bo’s house, you can wait there.”

“Is this,” the kid waves his hand vaguely at Thor, the cig writing a mismatched six in the air, “a habit of yours? Inviting strangers into other’s houses?”

“I was thinking – ”

“Yeah,” the kid speaks over him with an edged smile, “don't.”

“Fuck you,” the words throb in Thor’s mouth, spits them out. Walks away, not looking back. Thinks about going back, just to test if the kid’s cheekbones would cut his knuckles like a knife.

The kid’s laugh trails after him until it burns his skin far worse than the heat. He drinks it away through the night.

* * *

“Thor!”

Connie half-jogs, half-walks to him when he turns the corner, her denim miniskirt rides up high on her thighs. A soft patter of shoes on the pavement, then small hands tugging him down for a sloppy kiss on his cheek, sticky with lipgloss. She smells like spilled lemonade. Sweet.

“Where were you?” Connie asks, glittering, grabs his hand in her warm one, starts swinging them as they walk to the parking lot, “You said you’d be here like an hour ago.”

“Sorry,” he says, makes it sound real apologetic, throws in a scamp smile, just the way he knows she likes it.

He fell asleep on the couch. That’s all he gets these days, a few stolen hours of pitiful sleep here and there, full with those kinds of dreams you only get when you take a too long nap. He can't sleep at night, doesn’t even really try to anymore. He is tired of blinking into the dark of his room, watch the fan whirring in the window, pushing in more damp heat to settle on his skin, watch as the rotating blades cut the street-light, feel his own pupils trying to adapt to it. He is tired of the rustle of his curtains, the sound of his breathing, the quiet in-between. He is sick of it all.

He didn't tell anyone about it, doesn’t plan to.

Connie huffs, but squeezes his hand, “pick up your phone next time.”

“Bossy,” he teases, just to watch her scrunch up her nose. He likes her nose, it looks like what an Egyptian princess would have, high and long elegant lines, you feel the tip of it when she is so happy she pushes her face into yours.

He likes her. He really does. He likes that she was able to act like nothing happened after a night of tipsy confessions and mingling breaths, promises flowing past Connie’s lips, telling him that he could do anything to her, _anything, Thor, please, I want to be with you._

He told her no. He looks down at her as she tells him something about how Bo was being an absolute ass earlier, her other hand grabbing into nothing like she could just strangle him from here, her shoulders sun-kissed, and wonders if it would have been better if he said yes. Not that night, but the morning after. If he allowed them to try. To be something good, maybe even better than what they are now. It doesn’t help that about a month later he fucked one of her best friends, a girl whose lips just wouldn’t leave him. Bad, bad.

He spots Bo’s car in the parking lot from a mile away, even if he sees only the back, obnoxious purple with crappy paint job, but God, does Bo love that car. It was his brother’s before him. One night he stole it and had his first kiss in it with a girl he started hating a week after. 

They cross the street, Connie chatting away beside him, and Thor eyes the rest of the parking lot, empty like a ghost town, the long building of the 7-Eleven like some kind of fucked-up modern church in the middle of it, doors wide open, waiting for the congregation. It's almost sundown.

He licks his lips as they get closer, trying to chase away the heavy electric charge of the air that's been pressuring on the town all day, the clouds low and grey and fat, ready to pop any moment. There is no wind, just stifling hot nothing. The kind of weather you could choke on. 

Thor lets go of Connie’s hand to drape an arm around her shoulder, nudges her chin, smiles into her hair when she complains about him being too big. He knows what he is doing, trying to anchor himself to something, to someone, to quieten this restless dizziness inside him, all the worse for the stillness of the air that tightens around him like rope. He nuzzles her head and feels like a leech.

He hears Bo talking fast at someone as they get closer, maybe it’s Trav or Monroe, Thor thinks, there is always someone who they kind of just pick up as they go about town, someone who always tags along for a beer or something else. It's good. Homey.

Bo is explaining something with the kind of conviction someone has if they know they are wrong, vehemently and without end, and maybe it's Davie they have today, him and Bo always argue to the point they forget why. It's hilarious if you are high enough.

As they round the back of the car, Connie tells Bo to shut up, and then it's some kind of cheap peep show of someone you meet for the first time, where Thor only sees first the scuffed trainers crossed at the ankle, then long legs, a light body sitting on the bonnet of the car, mad dark hair curling against a dip of a neck, then _those eyes _peering over low-slung sunglasses.

“And nobody would fucking believe me, but I’m telling you I saw something,” Bo takes a deep breath, zeroing on Thor, “tell him Thor, remember down the plant, that farm house with the collapsed silo, remember how Lee and what’s-his-name sent us there for a dare and I came out screaming?”

He fucking hates Bo, because now he has to look at the kid, “it's true,” he says to him, swallows down something raw. The kid shifts his gaze from his face to his arm around Connie, slow and idle.

“It was just your shadow,” says Connie bored. An old story for a new audience.

“I didn’t ask _you_,” grimaces at her Bo. Connie scoffs, rolling her eyes, _oh, please_.

“Who’s this?” asks Thor when the kid’s round mouth closes over the red straw of a cherry Kool-Aid. The kid smiles around it.

“I’m Loki.”

It fits him. The calmness of _lo_ that rolls down your tongue easily, then the sudden sharpness of _ki_, like a slap. It stings. Thor mouths it silently, but doesn’t repeat it.

“He’s my new neighbour,” says Bo, and just from his happy sigh Thor knows which neighbour moved out.

“Thor,” he nods, realizing too late that Bo already said his name, not knowing if he still should introduce himself. He feels off-balance, like he is about to fall into a big hole.

“Yes, I heard,” Loki's leans back a little on one hand, tipping his head to see him better over his sunglasses, smile stretching, “nice to meet you.”

Thor waits for the bomb to drop, for Loki's easy voice with his out-of-place accent to say that they’ve already met, that Thor cussed at him barely a minute into their short-lived conversation.

It would be so easy, Thor could strike back that he was just being nice and Loki was a bitch without reason, Bo would probably laugh, in that stupid way of his, shoulders coming up to his ears, Connie would tell him that they were both being idiots and that would be it.

Loki slurps his Kool-Aid, and doesn’t say anything, which is immediately a hundred times worse. Thor feels like he got dragged into some kind of secret, something that only he and Loki shares, and he doesn’t want it. He doesn’t want anything to do with only the two of them.

“Loki’s been here for, what,” Bo says, pawing around in his pocket until he pulls out some candies, “two weeks now?”

Thor steps to him to take one, skimming his fingers over Connie’s shoulders as an apology as he lets her go, trying very hard to ignore Loki. He struggles with the wrapping, doesn’t find where to start it, and it's one of those sour ones, bright yellow with white powder thick on them – it stays on your fingertips when you put it into your mouth. Thor hates them.

“Almost three,” replies Loki, unzips his baggy hoodie halfway to his stomach, nothing under just bare skin, “hey, give me one.”

“Trade you,” says Connie, eyeing his Kool-Aid, her candy on the palm of her hand between them like a small glass trinket.

Loki raises an eyebrow, but smiles, drawls, “sure.”

“How do you,” Thor starts as he watches the exchange, clears his throat, “do you like here so far?”

Loki shrugs, something silvery glints around his neck, “it’s okay,” smirks at Bo, “not as boring as I thought it would be. Bo’s been telling me some stories.”

“Catching him up on all the good gossip he needs. Readying him for the shit-show that’s our school,” Bo plays with the wrapper, crinkles it like he would roll a cig.

“I bet,” Thor breaks the candy under his teeth, the sour taste twinging his jaw in waves, “which year?”

He doesn’t bother asking which high school. They only have one. He also doesn’t bother thinking about seeing Loki five times a week, not counting weekends, if he sticks around their group.

Connie smiles up at him, “he will start with me.” There is a drop of Kool-Aid on her white shirt, like a red button.

“Yeah? That's good.”

“Mhm, I like Connie,” Loki says, pushes his sunglasses onto his head, into the curls of his hair, gives Connie a toothy smile, “you’re cool Connie.”

While Connie cooes at Loki, and Bo makes retching noises at Connie, Thor realizes with a sudden and strong conviction, that within a year Loki will have the whole goddamn town under his thumb, will rule this flat land with all its bored-to-death teenagers like a king with a paper crown. Nothing ever happens here, they are all hungry and desperate for something that will make their breath catch, anything that will make them want to live another self-destructive day. And Loki is like a tornado, ready to snatch you away from here, to show you the world upside down.

It's the way he’s making it obvious that he’s giving away his good graces, already makes you feel special and selected just from the way he looks at you, says your name in a kind of way you’ve never heard it before. Renames you, makes you something you can only be if you are with him. Jesus. He’s trouble personified. He can so easily become an addiction.

Something like thrill runs through Thor, but it's small and quiet. He barely notices.

* * *

Bo’s been thrumming his fingers against the wheel off-beat to the song coming from the radio for a few minutes now. Absolutely, not-even-close off-beat, it's like he is listening to something entirely else.

The clouds eventually did pop over their little haven of 7-Eleven, the rain fell so heavy on them Thor felt the drops, a thousand tiny needles on his skin. They scrambled into Bo’s car like four wet cats, arms and legs everywhere, Loki called shotgun, Connie laughed until she could barely breathe, pushed away Thor's hair from his forehead with wet palms when he squeezed himself beside her.

They dropped Connie at her home – a pat on Loki's chest, what she could reach from behind him, _come next time too_, a gruff thank-you for Bo, Bo hurrying her even though they didn't have any places to be, a kiss on Thor's cheek, the corner of her mouth tasting like Kool-Aid and warm summer rain.

Loki told Bo to drive him to the closest supermarket because he forgot to buy groceries, flapping away Bo’s idea of them going with him, _my parents will pick me up_, a shared smile about some inside joke Loki apparently already has with Bo, a practiced move of pulling the hood over his head, black hair curling out untamed, turning in his seat halfway to look back at Thor, a flat_ see you_ – almost like a premonition – cheeks still a little flushed from their earlier scurry, then the few raindrops landing on Thor's face through the opened car door, then a hard slam.

Thor got out to sit in Loki's place, his hand slipping on the wet car handle, him cursing while Bo laughed at him.

_Ass_, he grumbled when he managed to get in, wiping his eyes, flicking all the water from his hands at Bo.

“I love this song,” hums Bo, bobbing his head, still fucking up the rhythm totally. The windshield wipers fly past before Thor's eyes, back-and-forth-back-and-forth, one of them getting caught up on something every turn, the street like a double mirror with its sheen of water, reflecting the grey-orange of the setting sun filtered through the clouds. The street lights are already on, twenty minutes and it will be dark.

It's so humid in the car Thor can barely breathe. They drive slowly, Bo taking the longer route to Thor’s, skirting closer to town limit, the fields a few streets down. Thor closes his eyes and sees the wheat bend under the heavy rain.

Thor picks at his nail as he follows the trickle of water on the window, hopes the rain will fall all night so he will have something new to listen to in the dark of his room, something that will be louder than his stupid thoughts.

“Want to come to this party Cash will have next Friday?” Bo asks, stopping at a red light. Theirs is the only car on the road.

Thor frowns, “You know –”

“I _know_,” Bo cuts in, “that's why I'm asking.”

Him and Cash aren’t exactly on the best of terms, Thor doesn’t really remember if they ever were. Instant hate starting from grade school, pity fights on the dusty playground, dirt and gravel in small bleeding cuts, self-important calls to the parents, long talks at home about good boys and violence and disappointment.

They only learned how to take their fights from the sun-heavy open to the alcohol fuelled dark; someone’s backyard, someone’s garage, someone’s living room.

“If you can behave yourself,” grins Bo as they drive through the intersection, his dimple showing under the pouring shadows. He has a small mole just underneath it, then another on the tip of his chin, then another on the end of one eyebrow. Thor’s very own star-child who digs through the dirt until he can pull out something he can love, who in third grade asked Thor if he wants to paint rocks and sell them on the street for three dollars each so they could hop on a bus and go somewhere where they don't have to go to school. They never got on that bus. They’ve been friends ever since.

Thor huffs with indignation, “_I _behave, it's that fucker who always starts shit, c’mon.”

“Then leave it, Thor, you don't have to tango with him,” Bo glances at him, still smiling, and Thor sees him spinning the winning argument in his head, “heard Austin will be there too, and you know he’s got that good stuff, could be a pretty neat little night.”

Thor already feels the dryness of his mouth, “yeah, okay.”

“Nice, nice,” Bo nods, happy, “I’m going to ask Connie too.” He turns a street, the blinker clicking harsh and loud, too fast – there is a problem with one of the lamps. Thor watches the headlights lick the wet road. It's dusk now, the shadows sharper between the houses. “You still have to do something about that girl, by the by.”

They’ve went over this many, many times, “I know.”

Bo figured out pretty fast what's going on with Connie and him. Thor figures it's hard to miss.

“It can't be too pleasant for her. Or easy.”

“I know.”

“Then do something,” Bo scolds lightly.

Thor doesn’t answer him, presses his temple to the luke-warm window. He spots a pair of dark sunglasses in the cup holder. They are Loki's.

He pulls them out, fiddles with them and Bo must see him do it because he says, “we could invite Loki too.”

“Mhm,” Thor turns it in his hand, squints at a few scratches on the lenses, “when did you meet him?”

“Couple days after I saw the moving vans,” Bo fiddles with the radio, switching station after station. He stops on something old and black-and-white, a man singing about lonely nights and empty sighs.

Thor looks at him, tries to not seem too eager when he asks, “impressions?”

Maybe they started off on the wrong foot too, maybe if Bo tells him that Loki was like an asshole, then Thor can tell that he was like that with him too, maybe they can orbit out of Loki's pull before he swallows them whole. 

“Funny,” Bo speeds through a big puddle on the road, it splashes on the sidewalk, the sound of it echoing inside Thor’s head, “smart too, seems like he’s been around, you know, I kind of liked him right away.”

Thor pulls his mouth, “that's it?”

“Well, I'm sorry, what do you want? I can't know him inside-out already.”

Thor thumbs the engraved brand on the side of the sunglasses, “right.”

Bo slows down to a stop in front of their house, and Thor eyes his bedroom windows through the curtain of rain. They leer back at him.

“What’s got you so tense? You’ve been off all afternoon,” Bo says with an exhale.

Thor's been off for so fucking long he barely remembers a time he wasn’t.

He turns back to Bo to stare at him, puts on Loki's sunglasses, continues to stare at him through the darkened lenses, “nothing.”

“Right.”

“Right.”

The radio cackles with a commercial about a pawn shop with unbelievably good rates, the woman marvelling with plastic-happiness about the money she gets for her wedding ring. Throw in a smile, the pawn shop buys your failed marriage too.

“Cash’s party will do you good, you need to unwind,” Bo says, trying to offer solution to a problem they both have yet to identify. Thor loves his smart pink brain, even if it's not in him to appreciate it right now.

“Probably,” Thor answers.

“Promise there won't be a problem?”

“Promise.”

“Promise you’ll do something about Connie?”

“Promise,” Thor waited a beat too long, and now Bo squints at him. Thor fixes Loki's sunglasses on his nose even though they didn't need fixing.

They both know the only reason Thor is sulking like a five-year-old is because he knows Bo will let him get away with it.

Bo groans loudly, “God, just go, you are worthless right now.”

Thor smiles at him, halfway out of the car already, his damp clothes soaking in moments.

“I’ll text you,” Bo hollers after him before he slams the door shut.

Thor runs.

* * *

His wet socks stick to the deep wood of the stairs, Thor trying his best to step around the carpet on them. He slips, bangs one knee against the edge, Loki's sunglasses falling to catch on the tip of his nose, and he haphazardly pushes them up onto his head with a hiss.

_Fuck,_ he thinks, then his mom’s voice, drifting through the hallway, through the dining room, from the kitchen, “Thor?”

And Thor thinks, again, _fuck._

He really doesn’t feel like he has any more energy to spare to gather himself together long enough to appear like a human being, stitched up from fragments like a repaired doll; somewhat polite – or at least _decent_, patient – or at least _not snappy_, normal – or at least _not this_.

He fumbles through the dark dining room, hopping on his legs to peel off his socks, grimacing, bumping his thigh into the table on his way to the lit kitchen, and he thinks with an almost hysteric laugh, that his mom for sure heard him clumsy through the whole house, and she must think he is drunk and he will have to deal with that too.

“Mama,” he says stopping in the kitchen doorway, ready to fight, a pair of dripping socks clutched in his hand.

He follows her fluttering gaze from his face to the floor under him, and he’s dripped a whole fucking ocean from his clothes as well, maybe from his hair too, and water and porcelain tiles really don't go well together, so he stays put, lest he slips here too, and sploshes his brain all over the tidy kitchen with its peach pink wallpaper and always fresh fruits arranged in the glass bowl like some kind of art Thor doesn’t understand.

She smothers a smile, turns back to kneading something, covered in flour up to elbow. It’s almost ten p.m. “How’s Bo?”

“Good,” Thor answers carefully even if his panic is receding.

“One of these days that car will just fall to pieces under him,” she says with a laugh, and there is some flour on her lashes too. Thor loves her.

Thor scans the counters and the island for anything he could stuff into his mouth. He is not really hungry, but just for the taste. Something to wash down that candy. Something that tastes strong enough to erase the memory of a scent of someone new; Loki's skin, rained on.

“That's what I keep saying to him, too,” he peers through the other door, sees the rest of the house in dark quiet too, “Balder?”

“Out somewhere, I doubt he will be back before morning,” she sprinkles something onto the pastry board with a sigh, “I finally coaxed him into coming home for the summer, but he has been barely here with me.”

Warmth spreads through Thor and he smiles at her, leans down a little to catch her eyes, tries to console, “he finishes his rounds, he will be here all the time. You’ll have two whole months to love him to death.”

“Not enough,” his mom raises her eyes at him with a sad line around her smiling lips, and Thor thinks about the blue mountains up North, of their strong beauty, solitary, thinks about this house, empty. “Do you want your dinner?”

Thor's stomach turns at the thought of a full meal, so he shakes his head, says something about eating earlier, tries to make it sound true, pushing down his fear of throwing up. He squeezes the socks in his hand like the necks of two geese he wants to throttle.

“Go take a shower, I will clean this up,” he gets a kiss in the air and a shooing wave, flour flying everywhere, and then a shout when he is upstairs, “leave your clothes out so I can wash them!”

He drops his clothes outside of the bathroom like a shed second skin, glad to be out of them, a fleeting thought of malice that maybe Loki got this drenched too almost leaves a grin on his face, then Connie drifts through his mind, her clothes wet and clinging and he shuts down anything that would come after that.

He stands under the cold water, pissed at himself for being such a bad fucking friend, for using her, pissed at Bo for being right, pissed that he will have to deal with it, pissed that he knows he will still fuck it up somehow. He reaches up to wash his hair, but knocks into Loki's sunglasses. Right. He forgot.

It's a blur from the bathroom to his bed, kicking into a few pieces of his TV tattered on the floor, just like his promise a month ago that he would pick them up. A shouting match, a slam of his door that rattled the walls, loud, then his pride stopping him from apologizing, louder.

He tosses Loki's sunglasses onto the heap of things on his desk he wants but doesn’t know what to do with, falls onto his bed in his sweatpants that are probably a size too small for him now and waits for the room to crumble on him, a badly made coffin under pressure.

The fan whirrs its song in his window, the rain has stopped, and now the humidity is pushing through the walls, slowly dripping down on him like honey from his finger after he dipped it into the jar.

At twelve a.m. he thinks about the star stickers above his head, so aged now they barely glow, thinks about standing up on his bed to peel them off. He doesn’t move.

At one a.m. he thinks about the house echoing around him, big and old, thinks about how he feels there is only him and the dark shadows in the corners, even though he knows there are two other people in the room at the far end of the corridor.

At two a.m. he thinks he would rather blind himself than look at the little crack on his ceiling any longer. It looks like his room took a breath and never let it out, it looks like a cracked rib badly healed.

At three a.m. he stood from the bed, pushed up his other window, dragged out a thin blanket from under his bed through it, onto the roof of the porch that sticks out of the wraparound veranda like a loose tooth. The porch is for his mom and her girlfriends to drink sour-cherry gin with ice clinking against the glass, for his father to talk business with people who sweat through their suit shirts, for his brother to sneak back a girl at night and kiss her silent under the wall lights. But the roof of the porch? That's Thor's alone.

He lies on the blanket, throws out his limbs to flatten himself to the roof, clutches Loki's damned sunglasses in his hand like a thief too greedy to let anything go. It's new, it's shiny, he reassures himself, he needs it close. He will get bored of it soon.

He follows the thinning clouds with bleary eyes, finds a big star peeking out that he has been meaning to look up for years. A hazy memory floats around him, his own lips against a petite jawline, murmuring made up things about that particular star, giving it a made up name, giving it made up grandness. A messy blowjob that burst him open like a supernova. The morning came, the star disappeared.

Thor raises Loki's sunglasses up to his face, not wanting to look at the sky anymore. He scrapes a nail against the little scratch on the lens he found earlier, then puts them on, darkens the night around him. There is a lazy breeze now, bringing the scent of his mom’s roses, of the wet asphalt, of the loneliness of three a.m.

_Loki_. He thinks about how much more _Lo _was the kid when he first saw him, at Bo’s, before they talked. How the tips of his dark hair glowed orange and brown in the tired sun, how he sat there like he grew out of the earth like a tree that will demand the space and attention it deserves, how his eyes gazed at something far away and out of reach. Thinks about the moment of soft set of lips, before Thor talked to him and they thinned to an angry line.

He thinks about how much more _Loki_ was the kid with his practised sneer, with the sharp flick of his wrist. How his oil spill eyes took in Thor like something that should be burnt down, ripped out, torn apart. Eyebrows with a provoked line between, jaw tight, ready for prey. Thinks about, again, just like that day, a knife. How easily you can cut yourself if you don't know how to handle it.

“Loki,” Thor mutters into the night, feeling a little bit stupid, a little bit brave.

Thor realizes this is the first time he’s said Loki's name out loud. He also realizes Loki said everyone’s name this afternoon, but Thor’s.

Good. He doesn’t want to know how it sounds like coming from Loki's mouth.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- u guessed it, Thor fell asleep on the roof only to startle awake in the morning when someone down the street started up their VERY loud lawn mower  
\- pls love Connie and Bo, I absolutely didn't plan them but now I love them with all my heart  
\- Bo's full name? it's so good and so silly u'll see later, Connie is short for Constance  
\- Connie and Loki are starting grade 10 (sophomore), Thor and Bo are starting grade 12 (senior)  
\- I have no idea how America works lmao never been there  
\- sorry for the lack of Loki in this chapter ik it was kinda boring without him but!! u will have more of him in the next
> 
> Estivate was so kind and made a moodboard for this chap!! you can check it out [ here on her tumblr ](https://estivate9.tumblr.com/post/187224271191/rosedolores-birds-of-paradise-hs-au), also you can read her fics [ here on AO3 ](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Estivate) which I would really recommend bc her writing is wow. go shower her with love she is amazing
> 
>   
Tell me your thoughts I love hearing from you all! Thank you so much for reading ily, stay safe


	2. Chapter 2

Thor crumples the napkin he wrapped his sandwich in into a ball and throws it into the general direction of the cup holder that has seen more trash than cups, but he misses, and watches it tumble down to the floor with resigned detachment.

Behind him Loki keeps playing on his phone, a constant high-chimed plinking. Thor unsticks his dry mouth to lick his lips. It's too fucking hot for this.

Thor pulled up at Bo’s in the early afternoon to pick him up and decide together how they can waste their day, the day so hot it's only bearable if you suffer it through with someone. While Bo tried to find his pants, Thor raided their kitchen for anything he could use to make a passable sandwich – he is almost eighteen, so very hungry, always, always, for food, for a good night’s sleep, for a fuck – then Loki sauntered in through the terrace door, asking whose is the car, and if he can come too. Like Bo didn't invite him beforehand.

Thor smeared mayonnaise over the long bun he’d found and ignored Loki's all too much familiarity with Bo’s house, ignored how Bo’s little sister’s guinea pig came out of his wooden house to fucking _lap_ at Loki's fingers when he wouldn’t ever come out for Thor, ignored Loki's pleased smile, ignored Loki.

The third time they met since the parking lot, and Loki has yet to say something about his sunglasses that Thor has taken to wear. Two times they were on him, right now they are under Thor's pillow like an awful secret hastily hidden away.

First time Loki saw it on him he blinked those eyes at him from his perch on the back of a bench, his smile widening, then turned back to Connie to continue his story that made her laugh, his black hair twirling into her brown one as they leaned into each other. Then Connie reached her arms out for Thor, _come here Thor_, with a sweet smile, a place between her thighs for him, but he didn't go.

Thor doesn’t know why he keeps wearing them. Some kind of soft payback, maybe. Or the quiet vicious satisfaction of taking something of Loki’s, because Thor knows sooner or later Loki will take something of his too. People like Loki don't leave things untouched. Taking for the sake of taking.

When Bo finally emerged no longer pants-less, Thor threw his keys at him so he can drive while Thor eats his sorry sandwich, and Loki dropped himself on the backseat, propped his legs up like he owned Thor's car. Thor sent him an irritated look in the rear-view mirror, but Loki was already bent over his phone, shaking a few tendrils of hair out of his face.

Bo was talking to Loki about one of the teachers in school Loki more than likely will have the misfortune of studying under, when he took a double take and slammed on the breaks so suddenly Thor almost choked on a piece of lettuce.

“What the fuck, Bo –”, Thor coughed, tearing up, but Bo was leaning out of the window, shouting at someone on the other side of the road.

“Maisie! Hey, Maisie, darling!”

Bo quickly glanced around, hands already turning the wheel to take a sharp turn and slide up along the sidewalk, slowly rolling along with the chick until she stopped. Thor vaguely remembered her, a perfect fuck-doll with a dentist father and former cheerleader turned loving housewife mother, nice teeth, nice smile, nice tits, nice loose virtue. Thor knows all this because he had a three-month-girlfriend who hated her. He thought about fucking her when they broke up.

“Bo,” Maisie stopped with a quiet oh in her mouth, pushing her hair behind her ear to bend down a little, her eyes eating up the car, then Bo, then they slipped to Thor too, “huh, hey Thor. Nice car.”

Thor did some kind of half-assed shrug, “thanks.”

A two word congratulation he always gets for the four half-summers slaved over at his uncle’s for pocket money, and for the very extensive begging for some extra cash from his mom. Even then Balder had to speak to a guy who knew a different guy who dealt with second hands and could saw off from the price if it's paid under table.

Loki stopped playing on his phone. Maisie passed her eyes over him too, but Thor knew she wouldn’t greet him if he doesn’t. The kind of girl who first wants your respect, only after that you are allowed to whisper filthy things about her into her ear. Have to make her respectable first so she can be your dirty little thing. Have to give her something first to be able to whisk it away later. That's all there is to it, you just have to find the right key to turn the lock.

“Sweetheart, haven’t seen you in ages,” Bo sighed to her, head halfway out the window, his short unruly hair tuffing into the edge, and Thor pressed his smile into his sandwich. Bo always had this voice when he tried to schmooze up to someone, thick and jam-like, innocent and convincing when talking to a teacher, just with a hint of suggested good-kind-of-risk and guaranteed fun when talking to a girl. No wonder Bo is really good at cards, he shuffles like no one, counts them too, if you are not paying attention. Knows where to put pressure, knows which direction to send a dimpled smile in.

“I was with my family in California,” she replied, dragging a finger over the metal of the window frame. Thor imagined her fingertip leaving a coconut scented smudge on the paint.

“Uh-huh, uh-huh, no wonder you look like a vision, look at you,” Bo said, all dreamy and inappropriate, and when she laughed he opened the door and stepped out to her, his back to Thor, his frame covering hers.

They talked quietly for a few minutes, Thor getting impatient by the second under the high sun, the rest of his sandwich warmed and closer to disgusting than edible. He glanced back at Loki in the mirror, and he was still watching them, black eyes drinking heavily, with a strange twitch in his mouth, tapping his phone against a knee. Thor pulled his eyes away from him.

“Hey, you guys mind if I hop up to Maisie’s place for a bit? Won't take more than a few minutes, swear,” Bo leaned in through the door, arms on the roof, the neck of his white T-shirt already sweat through, his eyes dark and bright under heavy lashes, grinning like a fool. Bo, Bo, sometimes he shines too bright for this place.

Before Thor could say that yes he minds, and thank Bo for asking while he folds himself back in the car, Loki chirped in, emerged from between the two seats, one hand grabbing too close to Thor's shoulder on the cushion, “Sure, go ahead, we’ll be right here.”

* * *

And they are still here.

Thor has already turned the radio on, one sugar-pop song later turned it off, _cherry kisses, bubblegum sunsets, you leave me breathless, baby, baby_, has already counted the houses on the street – twelve he can see from his seat, all arranged in a neat row, curving with the road, comfortable middle class with its blue roofs – eyed that single deformity in the perfect line of bones, a no-man’s-land empty plot a few houses from them, wire-fenced and overgrown with ankle high weed, dry patches of once-were grass here and there as a reminder for everyone to see; there should be something here.

Thor hangs his arm out of the window, lets the metal burn his skin, palms the boiling body of the car, thinks about leaving Loki here, climbing the fence of the empty plot, digging a hole in the ground to lay in it until summer is over. Let the roots grab at him, yank him down deep, soil in his lungs, garden of seeds between his ribs.

A drop of sweat slides slowly from his temple, and when it drips from his chin he has enough; the car rocks a little as he shuffles around with a huff, takes off his T-shirt, wipes his face and neck with it. Turns in his seat to stretch his legs over the driver’s seat as much as he can, his back against the warm door, the handle poking into his back. He puts his shirt over one shoulder where the sun pries at it.

“Hey,” the word thick in the thick heat, and Loki hums back, distracted.

“What?”

“There should be a mini in the trunk, maybe I left something in it.”

By the sound of it Loki stopped playing his fucking game. Thor can _hear_ his frown, “a mini what?

“Cooler. A mini cooler.”

“I'm not getting out.”

Christ. “I'm not telling you to. You can fold down one of the seats to get into the trunk.”

Loki moves around, the car rocks again, and Thor hears the click. Then the artificial rustle of the bag, an impatient zip – Thor almost snaps at him that it's not his stuff, so act like it – then Loki appears between the seats again to thrust a soda at his face.

“Thanks,” says Thor, gives in the urge to press the can against his brow, lets his eyes fall shut when the condensation drips on his cheek. He rubs against it like a dog. “You have one too, right?”

There is a cool hiss of opening one which is answer enough, he guesses. Thor pops open his one too, chugs it down like there is no tomorrow, knowing well that cola will only make him thirstier than he was ever before in his life, and not giving a single damn about it.

When there is some rustling of wrapper he straightens up to look over at Loki. He is lying on his back on the seats, hair fanned out around him like his own curly black hole. He already came without a shirt on, in light loose jeans with a belt around, which Thor really doesn’t understand because the elastic of his boxers peek out, just under his navel. Spread out on the backseat of Thor's car like a sugary teenage dream, all effortless charm and beyond-us beauty, not the kind you see on covers, but the kind you pass on the street once, under the pink and blue neon lights of a Chinese food corner; meeting glances, then restless nights filled with never-to-be-hads.

_You leave me breathless, baby, baby_.

What is Loki doing here? Tucked away from the world, hidden between people with worn down dreams and one-cent-wishes. What could possibly be enough for him in this nothing town, what is his compensation for the still days with their own sluggish time, for the choking knowledge of no matter where you stand, you will always be able to tell how close you are to one of the signs that mark the edge of the town.

Little prince of Thor's backseat. Two trainers-clad feet hanging out from the passenger window – the world at his feet. He has a way about him.

Loki lazily licks a broad stripe on a Drumstick. 

“Where did you get that?” Thor's asks, dumb. His shirt slips form his shoulder to his lap in a heap, and he feels the sun kiss his skin eagerly. He rubs a palm over his chest.

Loki blinks from dazing out of the window up to him, smile ticking, “what?”

“The ice cream.”

“This,” Loki asks, looks at it in his hand like he just realized he had one, “from the cooler.”

“My cooler.”

Loki licks it again, a pink tip of tongue, a fleck of chocolate in the corner of his broadening smile, “your cooler.”

“Give me one,” Thor says.

“I can't. This was the only one,” Loki replies. Sighes, “sorry.”

He is not sorry. He is not sorry at all. Thor is thinking about getting out of the car and walking away.

“You should’ve asked,” he says, a perfect mimic of his mom whenever Balder ate his stuff from the fridge, with the weak excuse of Thor didn't eat it immediately after coming home from the store, so he must not want it. Thor likes to save his favourites for last. It's better, always so much better.

Loki bites out a huge chunk then holds up the rest to Thor, “do you want it?”

Thor watches Loki tongue his lips clean, chasing the taste, fucking greedy for it. Sloppy seconds, sloppy seconds.

“No,” he replies, swallowing around his throat, wanting his ice cream, desperately, not wanting to ask for it from Loki, pig-headedly. It's the principle of it all. He sinks back against the door, the leather sticking to his sweaty back.

“Should’ve told Bo not to go,” he murmurs as he watches a titan-blonde woman water her colour-organized flowers, her toddler playing in the cool mud. The postcard-perfect part of Midwest, all it needs is a husband with a country brewed beer in his hand and a blue-eyed cat sitting in the kitchen window. The more Thor looks at them the more he likes the empty plot that fucks up the scenery. It gives something new to look at.

“Well,” Loki smacks his lips, finished with his ice cream, and the wrapper flies past Thor, hitting his knee, then bouncing down to the floor next to Thor's napkin. When Thor gets home he will have to sweep out his car if he doesn’t want the ants to besiege him again. “You could’ve said something. It's not like he ran off without a word.”

Thor can only see Loki’s chin between the seats like this, scowls down at him anyway, “you told him to go before I could open my mouth.”

Bo shut the door on them so fast, by the time Thor realized, he was already disappearing between the houses.

“He asked, I answered,” Loki says, nonchalant.

What's the point.

Loki moves around, rolls to his side, dangles his hand from the seat. His phone slides off from his chest, tumbles down to the floor. The screen is cracked, like something hit it just on the corner, a big glass wound, then spidery veins of infection spreading out. Did Loki ever cut his finger on it? His thumb, fresh nicks in thin lines of red, already healed ones in pink, the meat tender and oversensitive. Irritating Loki every time he touches something.

Loki picks it up while looking up at Thor, “you know it's going to take a while, right?”

“What?”

Loki suddenly looks _delighted _at his cluelessness, like a little canary that knows all the secrets of the household, “Didn't you see? The girl was practically already slobbering.”

Loki started unfolding himself from the backseat, sat up to lean himself between the front seats, his eyes glinting in a way Thor doesn’t know what do with. He presses himself to the door.

“No,” Thor answers. Maybe. He was busy watching Loki watch them.

Loki folds his arm on Thor's backrest, leans his cheek on it, looks at him with sun-dazed glee. Thor suddenly remembers his glare, that first time they met, how he couldn’t shake it off until well into the night, then thinks that this is much worse.

“They are fucking,” informs Loki, his smile widening when Thor frowns.

“What,” Thor asks again, his eyes slipping to Loki's necklace, a simple thin silver chain with nothing on it, a little above Loki's sweaty collarbones. The sun catches it, a white flash that leaves sparks in his eyes. Thor blinks them away, tries to refocus on Loki's face. He wonders if Loki takes it off before going to bed, afraid of a shiny noose. If he cares at all. If he falls asleep, easy and hard, or lies and waits for something, like Thor.

Loki straightens, leans in even more, plants a palm on the armrest, close to his knee. Thor feels the heat of his hand even through his sweatpants. For a moment he almost feared Loki would touch him and he hates this, the way Loki makes space for himself, pours over him like water from a tipped glass. Give him a few years he will be an ocean.

“Fucking,” Loki repeats, stretching the vowels, giddy and absolutely filthy. Thor stares at him and he thought Loki had black eyes, but they are raw-dark brown in the heavy sun, burnt sugar and charred trees.

When he was small his parents left him with his grandmother for a month in Indiana while they went on a vacation and Balder was sent off for summer camp. He can still hear the rustle of the black shawl as his grandmother covered her shoulders, dunes of cornfields around the single dirt road leading to an old church. _A last visit before they demolish it_. Stale silence interrupted by the creaking of wood, dust settling like a sigh. The beads of a rosary, the glare of a cross. Softly murmured words too complicated for a small boy, many of them he didn't know the meaning of. And now, here, for the first time he remembers the old prie-dieu in the darkest corner. The exact shade of brown. Made for kneeling, makes you kneel.

The sudden dizziness forces him to avert his eyes, and he finds a little scar on Loki’s chin, long-healed and faded white, but Thor recognizes if something needed to be stitched up, sees the three small points on either side, the ghosts of a cold needle and a dragging-hot medical thread. He wants to ask how Loki got it. If he got into a fight he had no business getting into, if he pushed and pushed until finally someone pushed back, if he bared his teeth to the crowd, hungry for the high of bruised knuckles. Or if he was just simply young and careless, reckless in a way that spoke more about his trust in the world than his own self-preservation, a child-like faith of warm safety, cradled in small hands until ripped away. Thor feels it traitorously bubbling inside him, urging-curious and desperate-like; _which version of the past you is still inside, tell me, tell me, tell me._

He pushes it down.

“They are not,” he says. The car has trapped the air inside, even with the windows down, and with Loki this close it's torrid. The sun bites at Thor's shoulder, insistent now, a neglected lover.

“What makes you think they are not?”

Thor squints at Loki, “what makes _you_ think they are?”

Loki wipes his brow, breathes out a smile, ‘want to bet?”

Thor almost laughs. Loki smells salt-sweet and a little syrupy, like the soda they drank earlier. He can taste it on his tongue, and it tastes like stupid decisions and frustration and the best kind of trouble.

Thor was never known for his prudence.

“Okay,” he agrees, wets his lips, “you like betting on things?”

“If there is a high chance of me winning.”

“And if not?”

Loki pauses, “all the better.”

That makes Thor laugh a little. He understands.

“One dollar.”

“One dollar?” Thor is more than surprised, “you want to bet one dollar, not–”

“Not what?” asks Loki when he trails off.

Not something horribly humiliating, not something painful, not something that will haunt every quiet moment of his life, not something that will reveal a part of him to Loki he never wanted to show anyone, least of all him, not something that could’ve been avoidable if he only said no.

One dollar. Loki is still looking at him, his hair damp around his forehead.

Thor slides a little lower on his seat, tries to ignore the handle still poking him, now his shoulder blade. A little more and it might go through his heart. One dollar for Loki's attention seems cheap. But what does he know.

“Not more,” he says.

Loki raises his eyebrows, “do you want to bet more?”

“No–? No.”

Look at him, one dollar and he still feels cheated and robbed. It feels like he prepared himself for a punch that never came, muscles taut, jaw tight, eyes squeezed shut so he wouldn’t see.

He was ready to haggle with Loki, to negotiate over imaginary terms and imaginary prices, to build up a whole marketplace of secrets and memories, where little lost things like sympathy and sincerity are only worth as the hand that holds them, where relics hidden under big rough-coarse fabrics like curiosity and the gnawing want to know the other get value or lose price the moment they get exchanged for arrogance and hubris, all depending on who stands on which side of the stand.

“Let’s just go home, I'm not waiting any longer,” Thor says, then, when he sees Loki amused face he hurries to add, to specify that he is talking about two different houses, “I’ll drive you home.”

Loki takes his hand from the armrest, sits back to give Thor space, “are we leaving Bo?”

We.

“He can, _fu_–,” Thor hits his head on the dome light on his undignified way to climb over to the driver’s seat – too lazy to get out, round the car, get in – his teeth rattles, and he thinks he hears Loki suck in a chortle, “he can walk himself back.”

While Thor texts Bo exactly that, Loki makes to crawl over to the front seat, two pale arms everywhere, a naked back, a smudge of dirt one of his trainers leave on the glove box, and a comfortable wriggle into the seat that means Loki has absolutely no intention to clean it off.

“What’s all this garbage on the floor?” asks Loki, kicking into something.

Thor starts the car, grumbles, “one of them is your ice cream.”

“Oh, it was very good, thank you.”

* * *

“What's that?”

“What?” Thor asks back, slowing down a bit, glancing where Loki is pointing on the street. The sun reflects back from a passing car’s window, scans over them like a searchlight.

They are about two streets from the main street, close to the proverbial beast’s stomach. A healthy scatter of diners with their greasy tabletops and shops with their always-bored part timers, moderately maintained lawn around the City Hall, benches with large flower pots between them, the overgrown leaves spilling out on the sides to tickle the sidewalk. A radio somewhere that's always on. A huge stone fountain that only spits water during national holidays, any other days the water is as still as the heat crammed between the buildings now.

“The psychic?” Thor guesses, because it's either that or the hardware store next to it.

“Yeah,” if it wasn’t for his slightly interested voice, Thor wouldn’t think Loki cares for his answer, knuckles against his chin.

“That's Della-Rae’s shop.” Thor takes a turn so they can pass it on their way, “ask anyone over the age of forty, they will say she is the real deal.”

Usually when people pass forty they become desperate enough about any kind of problem in their lives that they will force a purple-lipped psychic’s words to make sense.

“Huh,” Loki hums, “you ever been in there?”

“No, well. Not really. We wanted to go in there a few years back, like four of us, you know to look around, but she shooed us away, saying her shop is not here for us to laze around.”

They all like her, she is as much a fixture of this town like the thrift store that everyone swears has been in just yesterday, but it's been closed for who knows how long. The familiarity of the unexplained. It's there, and you are not sure why, but you would miss it if it disappeared. Della-Rae has known him and Balder since they were born, she is good friends with their mom, Thor remembers squatting on top of the stairs, sneaking as best as a child could, listening on them giggling about something over tea; she has a tinkling laugh, like a small bell on a ribbon tied around the neck of a lamb.

Thor takes a quick look at the front and it hasn’t changed one bit since. The shop itself is in the basement with steep steel grating stairs leading down to the door Thor never got past. The ground floor is an all-window display with opened heavy velveteen curtains, a cut-price chandelier, crystal balls, glass animal skulls, candles, books, the whole thing lit up with neon signs, _palm reading, tarot reading, auras, spiritual guidance, past-present-future, _and in the middle of it all is a huge illustration of a watchful eye inside a big palm of an opened hand, under it in curly pink neon; _I see all_. There isn’t a single sign about rates, or a phone number, not even an open-closed sign. No need to bother yourself with a fixed schedule if you can see into the future and know when someone will come.

“Della-Rae,” Loki repeats quietly, thoughtful. He pronounces it kind of sharper than them. He turns to Thor, “do you believe in that stuff?”

“The supernatural?”

“Would you call it supernatural if someone helps you with your life just by reading some picture cards for you?”

Thor can't help his bitter smile, “I would call it a miracle, honestly.”

There, he said it. It's out there, this black viscous thing that clings to him. He is thankful that he has to watch the road so he can't see Loki's eyes picking him apart. He is being eaten away.

Loki asks after a beat, “but would you believe it?”

Thor thinks about all the little superstitious things he tried to make his, trying to bend fate to his will just by knocking on wood three times or declaring penny after penny his lucky one and the like, only to forget about it all, again and again.

“Maybe, yes,” he answers.

“Liar,” he hears Loki's smile in his voice, resists to glance at him, “you would just call it a coincidence and move on.”

“I wouldn’t.” He would. He did. “Fine, then, do you believe in it?”

Loki turns in his seat to face him, folds one leg under him, leans into the backrest with his pointy shoulder. They stop at a red light so Thor looks at him, dives right into the pit. Thumbs the leather of the wheel, and thinks about all the light disappearing in his eyes, and how he might know Loki’s answer already.

“I do. Sometimes. In some places.”

God, the way he says things. Everything is a challenge.

“In some places,” Thor repeats.

“We had a psychic near us too, but it was just a front for some cheap sex and cheaper pills,” Loki toys with his shoelace, closes his eyes for a moment like _he is_ a seer, tips his head up to Thor, “this place, though. Everyone pretends to be so fucking nice all the time, almost makes me believe.”

Thor wonders how many people hooked their fingers around his necklace to tug him closer, gently, little by little, a thin line of luxurious pressure on the back of his neck. Loki allowing them with an indulgent smile, or leaning back with bored disgust. Or meeting them in the middle, just enough resistance to make it nice and drag it out slow. So it's headier when he gives in.

Thor jumps when the car behind them honks – he didn't notice they got green. He drives and Loki is still looking at him. Thor tries to unclench his jaw.

“When were you born? Month and day, I mean,” Loki asks.

“Uh, November. On the fifth.”

“A Scorpio,” says Loki, tastes the word, “they say you can never fool a Scorpio.”

Thor wishes. “You?”

“June, the second.”

“Gemini,” he says. He knows enough. “What do they say about Geminis?”

Loki reaches over to turn on the radio, the soft-white underside of his wrist bumps against Thor's fingers on the stick, “you can never trust a Gemini.”

The song from the radio blasts louder the more Loki turns it up, almost as loud as Thor’s heart in his ears, and Loki smiles at him, with his rolled-down-window-messy hair and heart-chin, wide eyes, bright lips, and something in Thor's chest cracks open, it hurts him, makes him afraid, bleeds him out, then through the crack something seeps in, strong enough that he knows he will be drunk on it soon, that he will be haunted by it and lost without it, that he will be hopelessly, miserably, stupidly addicted to it.

_You leave me breathless, baby, baby_.

The sweep of Loki's pine-lashes when something, at last, grabs away his attention from Thor.

_Baby. Baby._

* * *

“Hey, where are my sunglasses,” Loki asks, standing behind him, and Thor decides, waist deep in his trunk, holding a single cigarette in a death grip, that fuck it.

Loki told him it's fine if he just drops him off at his street, no need to take him to his house. Thor parked the car under a big tree with enough shade, got out with him to dig out his secret stash of cigarettes from under the carpet of his trunk, wanting one like a man before his execution.

His shirt still dumped somewhere behind the seats, unlit cig loose in his mouth, he turns to Loki, puts his hands deep into his sweats pockets, pulls himself to his full height so he can look down at him proper. That's the thing, Thor is near the end of his growth-spur – there are days he is aching, a few inches more – but Loki has just started his. There is at least a head between them and some more.

Thor can make space for himself too.

He pokes the cig with his tongue, takes in Loki’s face leisurely, “under my pillow, why?”

He admits the truth for Loki's reaction. He wants to see it.

Loki smiles with teeth, his eyes like Thor just threw a stone into the black water of a deep lake. “Nothing. See you on Friday?”

Thor smiles back.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Finally I can really milk that slow burn tag, I love it, 10k and they touched, but only ONCE. Also, height, and I can't stress this enough, difference.
> 
> Tell me how did you like the chap, it was so much fun to write it! 
> 
> [Estivate](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Estivate) made a new moodboard to make me cry pls take a look at it [here](https://estivate9.tumblr.com/post/187852343646/rosedolores-birds-of-paradise-chp-2) on her tumblr SHE IS AMAZING
> 
> As always, thank you for reading, I hope you all doing good 🧡


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \- Underage drinking, smoking  
\- Mentions of sex

Thor rips himself out of his dream – it's still around him, clinging to him with poisoned claws, it's _still_ – ensnared in his blanket, his heart beating a mile a minute in his chest. It may as well be caved in, hollow and empty, with how his breathing stutters and echoes inside him.

It's the middle of the goddamn night again, and Thor is so very _angry_. He is fed up with it. He wants to sleep.

A bug slams into his window, a hard-shelled fat thing; a quick thud that rattles his room like gunshot.

He grabs at his phone, squints through the sudden brightness, his finger hovering over Bo’s name. He could text him. He could send stupid messages until he wakes up. He could text Connie, too. Or that girl from weeks ago he promised he would write to. He met her right the day before he met Loki.

He could, but what would he say.

* * *

_Tangerine light, tangerine light. Tangerine light grows through his curtains, whispering about the translucent summer day he misses out. Whispers about the children’s barely-kept-silent excitement playing hide-and-seek in their grandparent’s house, whispers about the man and woman who are painting the then-guestroom for the baby growing in the woman’s belly, whispers about the first taste of cold water on a man’s tongue who spent hours repairing his car because he’d rather send the money for his brother just to help him get trough this month’s rent. _

_Whispers about Bo’s fight with his little sister, because she wants to play but Bo doesn’t, and he wants her to leave him alone already._

_Whispers about Connie’s hissing pain every time she rinses off the plate she finished washing, and the soap gets into the small cut on her hand she got while making dinner last night._

_Whispers about how it can't reach Loki. How it already, terribly, misses his skin. About its care and worry. How it doesn’t want Loki to go where it can't touch him. _

_Tangerine light, tangerine light. On the shell of his ear, on his brows, on his eyelids._

_Whispers against his lips; wake up Thor, wake up._

* * *

It's a haze. Slow. His mom’s satin-voice threads through their little dollhouse as she sings along with the radio. _Come to me, let me see, you. Come to me, and I’ll be, happy, with you. With you, with you. Because I love you. I do, I do._

* * *

A car’s impatient honk is what kicks him out of bed at last; Thor shoots up, still half asleep, scrambles to his window, leans out to see Bo standing beside his car, one hand on the wheel, his other gripping the edge of the door.

“Thor it's six already, what are you doing,” he shouts, not caring that the whole street hears him.

Thor blinks, trying to rev up his brain, thinks about shouting back something but his throat is too dry. He waves him in, murmuring a _just come in_, then one turn and three steps later he is face down on his bed again.

* * *

Balder’s voice; broad and heavy, dusty, a dive bar on the corner with dirty stories to tell. Then his mother’s voice; iridescent and pearl-like, chiding him lightly, loving him greatly. Over that is Bo’s laughter; a river of bubbling blue, shiny things coming up and sinking back down around you as you try to keep up, until you realize you just have to let go.

Then someone, whose voice their house didn't hear yet; the quiet drip of dawn after a night of black storm.

Thor burrows himself deeper into his pillow, but then the voice laughs too.

* * *

He is trying to control his breathing after his mad dash from his bed, down the stairs, across the foyer, then skidding to a stop between the sliding doors of the living room.

“I'm here,” he croaks, taking in the bizarre picture of Loki sitting on the two-seat with his mom, Bo sitting across them on the couch stuffing his face with chips, Balder beside him grinning at Thor.

Loki looks him over with a raised eyebrow.

“I can't believe you’ve slept this long,” Bo greets him around a mouthful.

“Well, – ”

“Thor, next time put on some pants before you come down, please, dear,” sighs his mom.

Thor realises that he is still in his boxers, and also realises, with surprise, that he feels embarrassed about it. He doesn’t know why. Balder and his mom are family, and God knows they’ve seen each other in different states of undress over the years with Bo.

“Mama, this is Loki. Loki, this is –,” he stammers.

“We’ve already been introduced,” replies his mom with a helping smile.

“Oh,” he breathes, his eyes straying to Loki's.

“Jesus, get yourself back those stairs and take a shower, you are still asleep,” Balder says, shoving away Bo’s hand so he can grab some chips too.

“Okay,” Thor says, blinking at Loki's mouth when it curls, then turns to do exactly that, and when Bo shouts after him that he has twenty minutes or they will leave without him, he says it again.

* * *

“I love your mom so fucking much, God –,” Bo stops to shovel even more cranberry muffin into his mouth, still oven-warm, pieces of it falling onto his lap, and as Thor watches him steer with one hand, barely looking at the road, he wonders if this is how they will die. Him on the backseat, with not enough space for his legs.

“Please don't, I'm begging you, don't start –” 

“If your parents ever get divorced, tell your mom I’ll be her shoulder to cry on, damn. You better start calling me father if that day ever comes.”

Thor just leans further into his seat and accepts. It doesn’t help that he can see that Loki is smiling.

“A literal _angel_, that woman, how could she have a beast like you for a son, Lord knows.”

“Okay, alright,” rolls his eyes Thor.

A lost lover’s sigh, “I miss her already.”

Loki turns in his seat to look back at him, “so, what, you slept through the whole day?”

Thor raises his chin. “Maybe. Why, what did _you_ do all day?”

An unimpressed look, then a flat, “you hair is still sticking up.”

“It doesn’t,” sneers Thor to the back of Loki's head, trying to tame down the part that's sticking up.

* * *

When Thor sees Bo turning on the road leading to the forest north of town, he asks what his plan is, but only gets a flippant _you will see_.

The pink houses and white fences and smooth driveways slowly melt into slanted utility poles and chipped trees and dry bushes and they pass in a lazy blur before his eyes, and Thor likes it. He likes that Loki rolled down his window, likes the feel of stolen breeze on his face, likes the rackety sound of the old car. His T-shirt plastered to his chest, the air hugging him.

For a fleeting moment he believes that he is still sleeping, but then, his eyes meet Loki's in the side mirror. His chin in the cup of his palm, mouth pressed to the soft meat there, a black arch of expectant brow, like he is waiting for Thor to say something. Then a blink, and it's all gone. Loki turned his face away, Thor got his breath back. Right. He could never make up those eyes.

“So, I was thinking,” Bo says enthusiastically while pulling off the road, the car bumping on the dirt, “this being Loki's first official party here in town, we should do something.”

“What's this place,” Loki asks when they’ve climbed out of the car, pointing at the trail leading into the heart of the pine forest. It's so strange, to feel the coolness oozing from the dark spaces from between the trees, only to turn your back to it and find the sun-bathed openness of the fields where nothing can remain in secret for too long.

“That's the, _oh fuck_,” Thor groans into his stretch; something popped so loud in his back he thinks he accidentally broke his own spine, “there is an old lumber hut there, everyone calls it the _Blackout_. You can guess why.”

“Just make sure you bring something clean to lay on the floor,” tries to wink at Loki Bo, but he fucks up and it looks like a fly flew into his eye, “anyway, as I was saying –”

Bo pulls out a bottle of Sazerac from the trunk, raises it high holding the neck of it, the glass glinting in the drowsy sun like a precious stone that's been cursed.

“As this will be the first of the, hopefully, many nights Loki will spend partying with us in our humble little Heeney, I wanted to commemorate the event with this beauty,” he twists the lid off with a pop, the whiskey sloshing inside, “because we never really gave you a proper welcoming and I figured why not.”

“So that's why you asked me like a hundred times if I liked whiskey,” smiles up at him Loki while taking the bottle, a little too satisfied. “You were so annoying.”

Thor tries to not pull his mouth at the reminder that they talk with each other when he is not there, the fact that they are neighbours is like a rusty nail in his foot that gets deeper every day. It just bothers him that Bo thought Loki should get a welcoming, that Loki _deserves_ one.

Loki doesn’t know yet what is means to be liked by Bo. He doesn’t know that Bo has so much of him that he can continue to give away little bits far longer than others. Thor sometimes wonders when he will be completely run out.

“To Loki,” Bo whoops when Loki lifts it up to drink from it.

“To me,” Loki says, eyes lidded, wide-smiled mouth against the lip.

And as Loki tilts back the bottle, his body a void silhouette against the tip of the smoldering sun, the fields a burning ocean, Thor lives it through as he knows he will a thousand times more in his memory; the moment of awe-fear of being around someone you shouldn’t; they will rip you to pieces. _Wake up, Thor. Wake up._

Loki takes the bottle away, a thin ribbon of spit glistens for a second before breaking between the glass and Loki's lower lip. _Messy boy_. An indecent kiss.

Thor yanks the bottle out of his hand.

“To Loki,” he says, holds Loki's eyes, and drinks.

* * *

By the time they get to Cash’s, half the house is already very drunk, or doped, the other half is well on their way to it, and Thor has three missed calls from Connie.

They didn't finish the bottle, but he feels the buzz in his head just right, and a small part of him debates that maybe tonight he should take it light, but then he looks down at Loki to his left as they walk up to the door, at his easy-pretend familiarity with a place he sees for the first time, and that part shuts up immediately.

Thor just hopes he doesn’t have to see Cash’s fucking tic-tac grin too much tonight.

Heeney has around eighty authentic Victorian houses, all prettied up for the modern times, all scattered through town like territorial animals trying to share a tiny piece of land. Cash’s is one of them, right up the only hill the county has, baby blue and pink-white combination three stories high proud landmark in a town that smells like cow shit if the wind blows from the west.

Thor’s house is one of those “mighty eighty” too, in a street where the properties are measured by acres, not yards. But at least theirs is not painted like an Easter egg. At least he is not pretentious about it. At least his mom doesn’t call interior design magazine editors every week so their house can be photographed, and the four-page long article titled something ridiculous like _Month’s Midwestern Mellow Marvel_, where they show the many various ways Cash’s mom put up the drapes.

They step through the door – Thor lets Loki and Bo go in before him, because his skin is fucking crawling just from being where Cash grew up only to be an asshole, so he tries to prolong the experience, the loud bass beating against his locking bones – into the stuffy hallway-slash-living room, where the dimmed lights are pierced through by the sharp pulsating of the party globes, the faces of everyone around them popping up like painted masks every three seconds.

Thor immediately takes a shot of something from a nearby table, puts back the glass with a little more force he should have while working his throat around the sting, the table wet with spilled out drinks. Someone bumps into him. There is a couple almost fucking against the wall in the corner, there are two girls screaming at each other, there are four boys standing in a circle yelling at each other and howling with laughter. The whole fucking school is here. It smells night-hot, like sweat and alcohol, like flirty girls and eager boys, like conversations everyone is ready to regret, like kisses everyone will wish could forget.

Thor wipes his mouth, “I’m off to find Connie,” he says to Bo, motions at Loki, “introduce him to Ian if he is here, so you don't have to babysit. Uh, the gangly one, Kane, not Landon.”

Bo frowns, “doesn’t seem the type who needs babysitting.”

They both look at Loki popping his gum while investigating the drinks. Thor swears he almost looks bored.

“You know what I mean.”

“I know, I know, okay. See you later.”

There are many benefits of being six-feet-one, one of them is that if you are in a crowded place, determined to get from point A to point B, people kind of just, give you way. Thor skims the faces he passes, greets a few of them, stops to grab a red cup of something hard, tones it down with club soda because that's the only thing he finds, and it's better than nothing. It tastes like glass cleaner. He wonders what Loki is drinking. He wonders if he has already selected an unfortunate soul who will be wrapped around his pinky by the end of the night.

He spots a yellow dress that seems familiar, on a girl with her back to him, chittering with another girl, but only when the she shakes her hair he knows for sure that it's Connie.

“Hey,” he jingles Connie’s earring with the tip of his finger when he gets close enough, Connie’s face going through a cocktail of expressions when she turns to tell him off for touching, then her face lighting up when she sees that it's him, not some creep.

She jumps with a little cry “you are here,” grabs him around his neck to tug him down for a hug. Thor's hand covers her entire small back. He greets the other girl, Julia or Joanna, fuck knows, and sees the bolt of something in her eyes before she tosses a bye at them. All right then.

“Sorry for not picking up, I was with Bo doing stuff,” Thor falters on, “and Loki. Loki is here too.”

“Oh, that's good, I’ll go say hi later,” Connie replies, holding his hand in two of hers, “what have you been up to?”

“Nothing,” Thor smiles, suddenly not wanting to share their own little party, how Bo laughed at him when he tripped on a piece of wood, how Loki just hopped up on the hood of the car and laid on his back in a way that made Thor think for a second he had done it a hundred times before.

“What are these,” he asks instead, playing with Connie’s earring again; a pair of glossy cherries dangling on their gold stem, “they look neat.”

Connie likes to pretty up, Thor likes to compliment; they work nicely. _Should’ve said yes._

“Thank you,” she laughs when he brushes his finger down her neck, pulls up her shoulder to hide, “just neat, though?”

“Beautiful then,” he wets his lips to say that Connie is more beautiful, but he reminds himself that it's not a good idea in the long run. Problem is, he says these things because he really thinks them, now, in the moment, not so he can reach some kind of goal in the future. Like fucking Connie.

He takes back his hand, and lets the night drag him away.

* * *

It was bound to happen, he guesses.

He thinks it as Loki catches his eye across the room, sipping his drink with a few guys from Thor's year. He thinks it when Loki beckons him with a little tip of his head, he thinks it when he immediately gets up from the couch he has been sitting on for the last hour with the murmured excuse of having to piss. And the booze hits him fast, hits him hard, but nowhere close like the anticipation of what might Loki want.

He weaves through the buzzing hive of school mates and drop outs, Loki's white T-shirt a beacon of heart that beats red-blue-red-blue with the song, like a stress signal. It forces you feel the ragged edges of the cut out hole in the middle of your chest while you can do nothing, but walk toward it.

Loki leans against the wall of one of the corridors that leads deeper into the house, just on the edge of every horrible thing that's happening around Thor right now, and when he steps to him, he is grateful he can turn his back to the room.

“Hey,” he greets him, eyes Loki's tilted hips jutting out like he might impale himself on them if he is not careful enough.

Loki sends him a half-smile, and Thor can _see_ how fucking comfortable he is with the idea that Thor came running like a trained dog.

“So,” Loki drinks, and Thor leans closer to hear him better, “everyone is talking about you, did you know?”

“No,” Thor answers. The back of his neck is tingling with sweat and dread.

“Mhm, they can't wait to see you and Cash get into a fight,” Loki says, picks at the people around them with his eyes, dissecting them like bugs on a table. A child’s cruel game born from boredom.

“I’m not –” Thor sucks in a breath when Loki looks back at him, “I’m not like that.”

“Like what?”

“I-I don't like to fight, I don't – I don't do it just for the fun of it, I'm not like that.” Like some fucking psycho who has anger management issues on the regular.

Loki's smiles into his drink, sharp-teethed, “I didn't say anything.”

Thor frowns, “I know, I just wanted to –”

What did he want? Isn’t that always the question with Thor.

He drinks deep from his beer, wishes he could swallow his words back down just as easily, “wanted you to know, that's all.”

_Wanted you to know_, Thor hears himself saying it over and over in his head, trapped in a loop; it feels too much, too early, too _intimate_. The act of knowing, and being known. The burning contrast of how much Loki knows about him already and how little Thor knows about him still. Thor, the empty glass house, and Loki, the thrown rock.

Something very fragile-sounding shatters very loudly which spurs Thor into looking around them, trying to find with already growing glee which one of Cash’s family’s expensive-as-fuck-ugly-as-fuck vase got annihilated. That rat broke one of Thor's mom’s outdoor pots a few years back, something Thor still hasn’t confessed, something he still wants to get revenge on.

“Come here,” suddenly Loki fists his T-shirt, tugs him deeper into the corridor, closer, “I have some questions.”

“What,” Thor is stunned into crowding Loki in, feels his knuckles against his chest, like the twigs he gets tangled into in the woods.

Loki slips his eyes to the side, asks quieter, “who is that?”

Thor looks at the girl and replies on auto, because being this close to Loki is– “a total bitch.”

Loki snorts, pushes Thor away just enough so he can have space to drink, pulls him back again, “and him?”

Thor wonders how many drinks Loki had, how many he can _drink_, “Bo’s buddy, but I hate him.”

Loki tilts his head up to him, “and that guy?”

Thor sways over him, too occupied with Loki to waste his time on anyone else, so asks, “what do you think?”

Thor never would have thought he would be one of the few who gets to see how Loki looks like when something lights up in his eyes, “the kind who sells bad weed behind the football stands during game.”

Thor bites down on a laugh, because yeah, a quick glance and he can see it, “don't tell him anything ever, a horrible gossip.”

Loki looks at the three guys passing blunt directly next to them, then blinks up at Thor and mouths, “them?”

Jesus fucking Christ, his tongue. Thor leans down to murmur into his ear, choking on the air between them, on Loki's salt-sweet smell, wanting to hate it, wishing he could hate it, “Georgie, Booker and Henry. Booker, in the yellow, he is in your year.”

Loki huffs into his neck, “of course.”

“What are you drinking,” Thor asks, dizzy, eyeing Loki's cup, his forehead bumping into Loki's temple as he pulls back, slick with sweat, and before Loki could reply, “let me get a taste.”

“If you give a sip of yours,” Loki says, his hand waiting for Thor's beer.

Loki's drink is something disgustingly over-fruity at first, with a sharp bite second and Thor isn’t surprised at all, really.

Loki takes a few steps away from him, Thor's own beer still in his hand like a cheap hostage, his smile the gun to Thor's head, “want to see something?”

_Show me, show me, I want to see._

Loki spins to walk deeper into the house, and god damn if Thor doesn’t feel the pull. He follows.

The house eats them up whole as they pass the dark doors, the bone-heavy bass quietens to a dull throb that passes between the pastel walls, gaudy framed paintings, and family photos with pressed shirts and pleated skirts.

Loki dances his fingers over a crystal doorknob, checks back to see Thor is still with him, drinks deep from his beer, goes on. Thor feels like he’s been made a ghost, forever restless, discontented, hungry, haunting a person who doesn’t believe in the netherworld.

“What's your beef with Cash, anyway,” Loki asks as he stops at another door, idly scratching the doorframe as he looks up at him. Leaving a scar on something perfect.

“Nothing.”

“What, is his money older than yours,” Loki asks, and Thor knows he is biting at him, but he can't make himself to feel it.

“I'm not from old money,” Thor says, even though he technically _is_.

“Mhm,” Loki sees right through him, they both know it, “I spoke with him, I think I like him.”

“No, you don't,” says Thor. Maybe he sees through Loki too.

Loki brings up a hand behind his back and opens the door, steps into the dark of it. Thor steps with him, unthinking, lost.

There is barely enough moonlight sneaking in through the curtains, filtered by their sheer gleam, and when Loki goes to a window to pull them apart, Thor almost feels it on his own fingertips as Loki touches them.

“So, I found this,” Loki presents without preamble, and lets the fluent light in.

It's a fucking taxidermy tiger. Standing in the corner beside a shiny piano. A tiger, standing on its hind legs, claws out, mouth in a snarl, like he is jumping at you. Like in the fucking _zoo_.

“Fuck,” Thor whispers, cranes his neck to look into his lifeless eyes.

“I know.”

“What the fuck,” Thor looks at Loki, looks back at the _tiger_, tripping on the edge of his laugh, “who would –”

“I know.”

“There was this,” Thor walks a circle around it, imagines little, annoying Cash playing in a house that hides a taxidermy tiger, “there was this rumor, right, that Cash’s great granddaddy or something had his hand in some illegal fur import.”

“Explains a lot,” Loki says, downs the rest of Thor's beer, absolutely no remorse, then puts the bottle on the piano. Thor wishes he’d be here when Cash’s mom finds the ring stain on it, before the maid cleans it off in a panic.

Thor catches Loki popping something into his mouth.

“What do you have,” Thor asks, walking to him. Infinitely more interesting than a tiger. He puts Loki's drink down beside the empty beer bottle, nudges them together.

“Oxy,” Loki rolls his mouth, “got three from a guy, I don't remember his name.”

Thor knows he didn't even care in the beginning.

And good old Roxi, still the main show of every party. The most popular girl in the whole school, the kids lapping her up like bees do the carefully dripped sugarwater off his mom’s cupped palm. Heeney doesn’t do vitamins.

He asks Loki for one, and when he grins before answering, Thor already knows the script. He is suddenly pulled back into a stuffy car, with a burning sun over him, with a strange passenger behind him. _This was the last one_.

He steps to him, presses until he is sure Loki feels the edge of the piano dig into that curving lower back of his. Thor’s hand moves, and the earth moves under them. He takes hold of Loki's jaw, thumbs the delicate bone.

_Perfect fit, perfect fit._

Thor leans into him, and waits for Loki to do what he is coaxed to do. Loki’s eyes eating him up as he tips his head up a bit, _into_ Thor's hand, but that's all. He is making Thor say it.

“Open,” Thor sighs.

Loki opens his mouth, his tongue small and bright pink, the Oxy melting in the center of it, like the best part of a lollipop. Thor’s breath shudders.

He tightens his grip and leans the rest of the way down, pushes his tongue against Loki’s, the Oxy warm, Loki's tongue warmer, and thinks about how hard the crash will be from a high like this.

When he steals the pill, Loki just laughs, nice and true, robin’s egg blue, “You fucking idiot.”

* * *

Thor has an insistent flickering in the back of his head, at his nape, like a faulty switch that keeps turning on and off. It's mad annoying. He zones out time and time again, static noise taking place instead of the voices of people around him. He shifts on the couch, clenching his teeth when a girl from one class below his shifts with him, almost in his fucking lap now, her little body too hot against his arm.

Bo watches him like he is about to something stupid, and that annoys him too. He is not some fucking ticking bomb. He doesn’t need to be supervised. He chugs down his beer, ignoring the girl’s shrilly laugh at that, and asks himself why he is here.

Yvonne parades into their group, in all her tank top and too short miniskirt combo, showing off a peachy belly Thor wants to bite into. The off-limits goods. Cash’s girlfriend. She plops herself down right in front of him, a flash of pink panties as she crosses her legs, a flash of tits as she reaches for a drink on the coffee table, long-lashed gaze on Thor. Tease.

She says hi to Thor, in a made-high voice that makes Thor remember her muffled moans against his hand when he fucked her stupid in the bathroom almost a year ago, Cash one room away. He greets her back, knowing full well they are thinking about the same thing.

The back of his head flares up again, the itching all over his skin screaming. He stands up to find Loki. He hasn’t seen him since they came back from that room, the pill melted over Thor’s tongue like an ice cube over a busted lip.

* * *

The few intakes of air outside feel fresh and light, until the summer warmth tightens around his windpipe. The front of the house is packed full with flowers, purples everywhere, and Thor thinks if he dies tonight, his cold body laid on a metal bed, his chest opened under surgical lights, his lungs will look just as purple.

The sky spins and spins above him, the stars glimmering streaks of tears, like he is the only still point in the whole universe, like he can't move because everything else is so fast around him.

Loki is standing further away, looking down the private road leading from the house to the street, talking on the phone, smiling. Thor’s itch quietens down.

He touches his elbow, almost stepping back in surprise when Loki immediately turns, ripping his arm away from him. He sends a scowl to Thor, then walks away a few steps, speaking lowly into the phone.

Thor is left standing there, picking at Loki's silhouette in the garden lights.

“What do you want,” Loki asks when he pockets his phone, mouth thinned to an angry line. It pisses Thor off, seeing it again.

“Thought I would ask if you wanted to come in to drink something.”

“Leave me alone,” Loki says, pupils blown to all hell. Thor wonders if he looks the same.

“What the fuck is your problem,” he asks, and realises that he doesn’t mean just right now.

Loki takes a big breath, and it's Thor who feels the dampness of the night on the roof of his mouth. He wants to spit it out.

“Nothing. Leave me alone,” Loki says, looks at Thor for a moment, chest rising. A lock of hair is sticking to his cheek, “I'm going home.”

“What,” Thor blinks, reels at the sight of Loki's already turned back, “do you even know how to get home?”

Loki rounds at him, waving his hand down the street, “this hillbilly town is so fucking small, _Thor_, I could literally walk like three hours and be at the other end of it. I think I will be fine.”

“Let me walk you home,” Thor says. It sounds like a fuck-you.

“I’d rather get lost,” Loki answers.

He stars walking away from him, again, and Thor stumbles to catch up to him, managing to grab his forearm, his fingers overlapping, his palm burning, “Come on,” Thor murmurs. It sounds like a sorry.

Loki shakes, closes his eyes for a moment, twists his arm forcefully away, “I hate it here.”

“You could’ve just not come, nobody forced you,” Thor says.

“Not _here_,” Loki sneers at him, “here, Heeney. A fucking pigpen of the same faces. Just-just a bunch of yokels who shoot at squirrels and–, just fields and farms for miles. There is nothing here.”

_You are nothing_.

Loki is furious and it dawns on Thor, “You can really hate, huh.”

The fields aflame; a fire that can't be put out. The sky above them wobbles.

“Imagine when I love.”

* * *

Thor goes back and drinks, laughs at unfunny things, drinks more, smokes, pops pills like five cent candies. He wanders the house until he finds Connie. He hugs her tight around her waist, kisses her deep and fast and filthy. It's easy, she is easy.

Easy, easy.

Easier.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It means the world to me that you guys are here, I love you all 💛💛💛💛


End file.
